Chapter 44

When facing the dangers, mysteries, horrors (and other things) of our descent to this strange and wonderful subterranean land of Drome, how often did I say to myself:

"If ever I get out of this, never anything like it again!"

And I truly believed it at the time, though I should have known better. I should have known—Ididknow that adventure and mystery have inexplicable and most dreadful charms. Indeed, the more fearful the Unknown, the more eager a man (one who has heard the Siren song which adventure and mystery sing) is to penetrate to its secret places—unless, indeed, the charms of some Lepraylya or Drorathusa entwine themselves about the heart. In my case—well,Amor ordinem nescit.

Here was I in the Golden City; here was everything,it would seem to another, that could conduce to contentment, to that peace of mind which is dearer that all. And yet I was restless and very unhappy.

And the Unknown was calling, calling and calling for me to come. To what? Perhaps to wonders the like of which Science never has dreamed. Perhaps to horrors and mysteries from which the imagination of even a Dante or a Doré would shrink, would flee in mad terror—things nameless, worse than any seen in a horrible dream.

But I wanted to go. Yes, Iwouldgo. I would go into that fearful land of Grawngrograr—discover its mysteries or perish in the attempt.

And I am going, too. That journey has not been abandoned, only delayed.

It was like this.

I was drawing up, in my mind, tentative plans (my purpose was yet a secret) when one day Milton Rhodes came in, and, after smiling in somewhat enigmatic fashion for some moments, he suddenly asked:

"I say, Bill, how would you like to see the stars, the sun again?"

"The sun? Milton, what do you mean?"

"That I am going back to the surface, out onto the snow and ice of Rainier, back to Seattle. I thought that you would want to go along."

"What in the world," I exclaimed, "are you going back for?"

"There are many things that we ought to have here in Drome; a book of logarithms, the best that I can get, is one of them. We'll get those things, or as many as we can, for it would, of course, be impossible to bring them all. We'll wind up our sublunary affairs, and, hurrah, then back to Drome! What do you say to that, oldtillicum?"

"What does Lepraylya say?"

"That I may go; otherwise, of course, there would be no going. At first she wouldn't even hear of it. She feared that it might be impossible for us to maintain secrecy—that some of our precious politicians might get down into Drome. I am sure she believes that the kingdom would have more to fear from half a dozen of those sons of Proteus than from an army of sixty thousand men. And, bless her heart, when I think of some of their blunders, asininity, hypocrisy, lying, stupidity, coat-turning and sheer insanity, I am of opinion that there is not much exaggeration, if any, in that idea of hers.

"But I have at last gained her consent. With our large party, there can not be any danger."

I was not sure of that, but I kept those thoughts to myself.

"Of course, I want to go," I told him. "But I want to come back to Drome."

"Most assuredly, Bill, we'll come back to Drome."

"But," said I, "there is something that I don't understand."

"Which is what?"

"Wecan'tkeep our great discovery a secret. And, as soon as our world has it, adventurers, spoilers, crooks, thieves and worse will come swarming down that passage. We'll loose upon our poor Dromans a horde of Pizarros."

"Did I think for one single moment that what you say, or anything like it, would follow, never one step would I take towards the sun. You say that we can not keep the discovery of Drome a secret; we can, and we will—until such time as it will not matter. We will come out onto the glacier in the nighttime. Our ways of egress—I suppose we'll have to tunnel our way out through the ice, that there will not be any accommodating crevasse—will be most carefully concealed. No one will see us come out. No one will know of our journeys to and from the Tamahnowis Rocks, for they will be made under cover of darkness. No one will know.

"Fortunately, by the way, as it now turns out," he added, "when we adopted the Droman dress, we did not throw away our pants et cetera, and so, though those clothes are somewhat the worse for wear, our appearance up there on Mount Rainier will cause no remark."

"But our showing up at home," I said, "after so long an absence will cause plenty of remarks and more than remarks. How will we answer all the questions that they will surely ask us?"

"Tut, tut!" smiled Milton. "If all our difficulties could be so easily resolved as that!"

"But how will we do it?"

"We won't answer them, Bill; we'll keep them guessing."

"But suppose we find that Scranton has let out something that will give them a pretty good idea as to what has happened?"

"That might be bad," answered Rhodes. "But I have every confidence in Scranton's discretion. He will, I feel sure, maintain that utter silence which I requested, until the period designated expires. Possibly he may never tell what he knows.

"I believe, however," he went on, "that we ought to leave the world, our world, a record of the discovery. I will set down to the extent that time permits those things which, in my opinion, will interest the scientific world. As for the discovery itself, the journey and our adventures, yours, Bill, is the hand to record that."

"A record?" I exclaimed. "Then why all this secrecy, this moving under cover of darkness and pussy-footing around if you are going to broadcast the discovery of Drome to the whole world?"

"Because we will then have left that world and the way to this will have been blasted up and otherwise closed."

"That," I told him, "will never keep them out."

"I believe that it will. And, if any one ever does find his way down, he'll never return to the surface; he'll spend the rest of his days here in Drome, even if he lives to be as old as Methuselah. Be sure that you put that into the record! The Dromans are human, and so they are not quite saints. But their land is never going to be infested with plunderers or any of our sons of Proteus if I can prevent it, and I feel confident that I can.

"This closing of the way will not mean complete isolation. At any rate, I hope that it will not. For I feel confident that ere very long the two worlds will communicate with each other by radio. There is a possibility, too, though that possibility is indeed a very remote one, that each will evensee, by means of television, the inhabitants and the marvels of the other."

One or two weird things befell us during our return journey, but time presses and I can not pause to record them here.

The party was composed of picked men, one of whom was Ondonarkus. We had one ape-bat.

This going up was a more difficult business, I want to tell you, than our going down had been. There was one consolation: we did not get lost.

Onward and upward we toiled, and at last, on the 28th of June, we reached the Tamahnowis Rocks. Thanks to Rhodes' chronometer-watch and the very careful record which he had kept, we knew the very hour.

This was about ten o'clock in the morning. The way out was completely blocked by the ice. Cool air, however, was flowing in through fissures and clefts in the walls and the roof of the tunnel.

We waited until along towards midnight, for fear some one might be about, that some sound might reveal the secret of the rock.

It was about ten o'clock when we began to dig our way out through the ice. The tunnel was not driven out into the glacier but up alongside the rock wall, through the edge of the ice-stream.

Hurrah! At last our passage was through!

And, as old Dante has it,

"Thence issuing we again beheld the stars."

[1]Zandaraby John Martin Leahy, Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc., 1953.

[2]This surmise of Mr. Carter's is correct. The above quotation is taken from a modernizedAnatomy of Melancholy. Burton, though from what Latin writer he took the words I can not say, wrote:"Animis haec scribo, non auribus."—Darwin Frontenac.

[2]This surmise of Mr. Carter's is correct. The above quotation is taken from a modernizedAnatomy of Melancholy. Burton, though from what Latin writer he took the words I can not say, wrote:

"Animis haec scribo, non auribus."—Darwin Frontenac.

[3]Sick Moon:Old Moonin the Chinook jargon.—Darwin Frontenac.

[4]"At this time (November, 1843) two of the great snowy cones, Mount Regnier and St. Helens, were in action. On the 23rd of the preceding November, St. Helens had scattered its ashes, like a white fall of snow, over the Dalles of the Columbia, 50 miles distant. A specimen of these ashes was given to me by Mr. Brewer, one of the clergymen at the Dalles."—Fremont.

[5]"When the bridge at Colebrook Dale (the first iron bridge in the world) was building, a fiddler came along and said to the workmen that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders thought this boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant musician to fiddle away to his heart's content. One note after another was struck upon the strings until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy. When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop."—Prof. J. Lovering.

[6]"It has been calculated that at the depth of 35 miles, air, subjected to the pressure of a column of matter of the mean density of that at the surface of the earth, would acquire the density of water; that at the depth of 173 miles, water itself, which is eminently incompressible, would acquire the density of marble; and at the centre, marble would have a density 119 times greater than at the surface.But the comparatively small mean density of the mass [of the earth] proves that none of these effects take place."—Brande.

[7]"The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known to pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort—that of the mill streams at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It has been long observed that the sea water flowed into several rifts and cavities in the limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and a regular channel, sixteen feet long and three feet wide, with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger cavity. The sea water flowed into this canal, and could be followed eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared in holes and clefts in the rock."—George P. Marsh:Man and Nature.

[8]"Considering that the mean density of the whole earth is only about five and a half times that of water, and that the materials of which the crust of the earth is composed are all compressible in a greater or less degree, so that even at no very great depth the density of the different substances must be greatly increased by the mere pressure of the superincumbent materials, some philosophers have supposed that the effects of pressure must be counterbalanced by the expansive force of a great heat subsisting in the interior of the earth; and others that the earth is not solid,but merely a hollow shellof inconsiderable thickness."—Brande.

[9]"One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing along the streets of the Villa de Natividada, I observed some boys amusing themselves with some luminous object, which I at first supposed to be a kind of large fire-fly; but on making inquiry, I found it to be a beautiful phosphorescent Fungus, belonging to the genus Agaricus.... The whole plant gives out at night a bright phosphorescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar to that emitted by the larger fire-flies, or by those curious soft-bodied marine animals, the Pyrosomae. From this circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabitants 'Flor de Coco.' The light given out by a few of these Fungi in a dark room was sufficient to read by."—George Gardner.

[10]"The Chevalier d'Angos, a learned astronomer, carefully observed, for several days, a lizard with two heads, and assured himself that this lizard had two wills independent of each other, and possessing nearly equal power over the body, which was in one. When a piece of bread was presented to the animal, in such a manner that it could see it with one head only, that head wished to go towards the bread, while the other head wished the body to remain still."—Voltaire.

[11]SeeIn Amundsen's Tent, by John Martin Leahy, in August Derleth's anthology calledThe Sleeping and the Dead, page 386.—Darwin Frontenac.

[12]"A very decided luminosity has been observed to proceed from dissecting-room subjects, the light thus evolved being sufficient to render the forms of the parts (which are peculiarly bright), almost as distinct as in the daylight.... Three cases are recorded by Sir H. Marsh, in which an evolution of light took place from the living body.... The light in each case is described as playing around the face, but not as directly proceeding from the surface; and in one of these instances, which was recorded by Dr. D. Donovan, not only was the luminous appearance perceptible over the head of the patient's bed, but luminous vapours passed in streams through the apartment."—Dr. Carpenter.

[13]"The very children, it is said, pointed to their foreheads as he passed, being taught to regard him as a kind of madman."—Irving.

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